David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

There’s a guy, she told Allison over dinner,but you probably wouldn’t approve.

Jessica gives the appearance of being composed. She is acting, Allison thinks. She has always been good at that. Folding her leg, placing her hands in her lap, lifting her chin and looking over the courtroom. She listens carefully to the questions and takes a moment before answering. She has told them that she is a junior at Mansbury College, with a double major in political science and history. She has told them that she worked part-time at Dillon & Becker as a research assistant, that she is considering law school. She has told them that her parents separated more than a year ago and were divorced by last Thanksgiving, about seven months ago.

It’s okay to tell them, Allison has assured her daughter repeatedly, as if Jessica had any choice.

“Tell us about the seventh of February,” Roger Ogren says. “A Saturday evening.”

The day Sam was murdered.

“I had been on campus all day,” Jessica answers. “About eight that night, I went home.”

“ ‘Home’ being your mother’s home?”

“Yes.” Jessica tucks a hair behind her ear.

“Why did you go to your mother’s home, Ms. Pagone?”

“To study. I had a couple of papers due and it’s-sometimes it’s hard to study at the dorms. So I’ll go home and study. I’ll do my laundry sometimes, too.”

The judge smiles; he must recall when his children did the same thing, took advantage of their time at home for meals and the washer and dryer. Jessica looks at the judge as if she has been left out of the joke. She couldn’t smile right now if someone tickled her feet.

“What time did you arrive at the house? You said ‘around’ eight?”

“I think it was about eight-thirty.”

“Was your mother home at eight-thirty on the evening of Saturday, the seventh of February?”

“No.”

“When did you see your mother that night?”

Jessica looks into her lap. “I can’t say exactly.”

“An approximate time, Ms. Pagone?”

Allison, her hand resting on a notepad, catches herself crumpling the sheet.

“I had fallen asleep,” Jessica says. “I hadn’t been keeping track of time.”

She’s being difficult. They already know this information. It will have the opposite effect, Allison realizes. The more Jessica fights with the prosecutor, the more it highlights how hurtful her testimony is, how reluctant she is to part with the information.

“Was it before or after midnight that your mother came home?”

“I-I guess it’s hard to say,” she says quietly.

“Your Honor,” says Roger Ogren.

“You can lead, Counsel,” says the judge.

“Ms. Pagone, it was after midnight, wasn’t it?”

“I-yes, it was after midnight, I believe.”

“In fact, it was after one in the morning. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Closer to two, in fact.”

“Yes.”

“Where in the house were you when your mother came home?”

Jessica’s eyes fill. “On the couch.”

“And your mother came in through the garage door?”

Jessica nods.

“Please answer out loud, Ms. Pag-”

“She came in through the garage. Yes.”

“Describe her appearance.”

“She was probably tired,” Jessica says. “It was late. It was two in the morning. Ofcourse she would be tired.”

“Tell us what she was wearing.”

“She was wearing”-Jessica extends a hand-“a jacket. A sweatshirt and jeans.”

“A sweatshirt.” Roger Ogren retrieves the evidence bag holding the maroon sweatshirt, emblazoned withMANSBURY COLLEGE, and shows it to her. “This sweatshirt.”

“Yes, that might be the sweatshirt.”

“Itmight be?” Ogren asks. “Jessica, does your mother, to your knowledge, own more than one maroon sweatshirt with the words ‘Mansbury College’ on it?”

Jessica shakes her head. “I bought it for her. At the campus store.”

“So, having the chance to consider it,” says Ogren, shaking the evidence bag, “are you confident that this was definitely the-”

“That was the sweatshirt she was wearing.Okay?”

“Okay.” Ogren replaces the evidence and turns to Jessica again. “Tell us what you saw on your mother’s face,” he requests. He is clearly trying not to cross-examine his own witness, even though the judge has given him permission to do so. “Did you see something on her face?”

“There might have been some dirt on her face.”

Jessica is speaking so quietly that Ogren and the judge lean forward to hear her.

“Dirt on her face.” Roger Ogren corrects the problem by speaking at a high volume himself. “And what about her hands?”

“Yes.”

“Yes-she had dirt on her hands, too?”

“Yes.”

“She had dirt on her face and on her hands. And what else? Her coloring? Her hair?”

Jessica, with hooded eyes, speaks quickly into the microphone, as if to get the answer over with as quickly as possible. “Her hair was matted down. Like she was sweating. She was pale. She looked sick.”

“And did you talk to her about these things, Ms. Pagone? Did you ask your mother about the dirt on her face and hands? Her matted hair? Her pale coloring?”

“Mother-what did you do?” she had cried. “What happened?”

“I asked her.”

“Tell me, Mother. Tell me what happened.”

“And what did she do or say?”

“She went to the bathroom.” Jessica looks away, as if to avoid the entire thing. That is an impossible task now. She is trapped on the witness stand, surrounded on all sides by people very interested in what she has to say.

“What did-”

“She vomited.”

“Your mother came into the house, went right to the bathroom and vomited?”

Jessica reaches for the water placed on the witness stand for her. She does not answer the question, but Roger Ogren probably doesn’t care. He just wanted to repeat the fact that Allison threw up the moment she walked into the house.

Tell me what happened, Mother. Tell me.

“Did you talk to your mother after that, Jessica? Did your mother tell you where she had been, what she had done, why she had dirt on her hands and face at two in the morning?”

“Objection,” Ron McGaffrey says, half out of his chair.

“One question at a time, Counsel,” the judge says.

“She didn’t say much,” Jessica says, before a new question is posed. No one seems inclined to stop her, under the circumstances. “She-I asked her what had happened. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. She went upstairs and that was that.”

“And what did you do?”

“I-she went to bed. I asked her if she wanted anything. If she was feeling well. She just wanted to go to bed.”

“And you didn’t talk to her again that night?”

“No. I finally went to my bedroom and went to sleep.”

“Then let’s go to the following morning, Jessica. The day after Sam Dillon’s murder.”

Allison’s attorney objects. This being the first day of the trial, there has been no testimony fixing the date of Sam’s death as Saturday night, February seventh. The judge sustains the objection. Roger Ogren rephrases.

“Sunday morning,” Jessica says. “I woke up about ten. I went to get the paper. I made some eggs and started studying.”

“When did you see your mother?”

“I went upstairs at about noon. She is-she’s usually an early riser, so-I was wondering, I guess, if something-if she was sick or something.”

“And when-”

“She was in her room. She said she didn’t feel very well. She said she was still feeling sick and wanted to be left alone.”

“And what did you do?”

Jessica pauses. She has not looked in Allison’s direction yet. She is concentrating on something other than the question, to the point that Roger Ogren steps forward to ask the question again.